Premiere: 11 September 2020, SĽUK, Bratislava
Credits
Concept, Script, Director and Performer: Sláva Daubnerová
Stage and Costume Design: Sláva Daubnerová
Choreography: Andrej Petrovič
Music: Martin Burlas
Video: Jakub Gulyás, Jakub Pišek
Light and Sound Design: Milan Slama
Voiceover: Michaela Vrábová
Producer: P.A.T. Platform for Contemporary Theatre
Production: Mana, s.r.o.
About the work
Masterpiece is a solo physical-visual performance about the inner anxiety of the artist: isolation, the creative process, self-doubt, constant evaluation, and the experience of success and failure. At its centre is a fundamental question: To be, or not to be an artist?
The performance also looks at the position of women in Western art history and their long struggle for recognition within a predominantly male artistic canon. What begins as a personal reflection gradually expands into a broader meditation on generations of women artists whose work and legacy have shaped the way women can be seen and understood in art.
Artistic approach
In Masterpiece, Daubnerová brings together the visual, physical and documentary strategies developed throughout her performance work and turns them towards herself. The body, live presence, voice, video and carefully constructed visual compositions become tools for examining the artist’s own experience.
Rather than presenting a conventional autobiographical confession, the work places personal experience within the larger history of women artists and asks what it means to devote one’s life to art, to constantly question its value, and to seek recognition.
Performance
Daubnerová is the sole performer, author, director and visual creator. The work represents the most direct encounter between her performative practice and her own artistic identity.
Awards
Crystal Wing Award 2021 – Theatre and Audiovisual Art
Tatra banka Foundation Award for Art 2021 – Theatre, for directing, script and performance
Slovak Minister of Culture’s Award for 2020 – for exceptional contribution to contemporary theatre and dance, with reference to Masterpiece and Lolita
Selected international festivals and showcases
International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra, 2020
Drama Queer Festival, 2020
Artistic development
Masterpiece represents the culmination of Daubnerová’s performance practice. The questions that had accompanied her from Cells onwards — the position of women in art, the relationship between artist and artwork, the use of documentary and authentic material, and the body as a means of artistic expression — are ultimately turned towards herself.
Where her earlier works approached the lives and work of other artists, Masterpiece makes the artist herself the subject. It brings together the documentary, visual, physical and autobiographical strategies developed throughout her previous work, transforming them into a deeply personal reflection on artistic identity, the demands of creative life and the need for recognition.
As her most personal and critically recognised solo performance, Masterpiece forms the culmination of the artistic language she developed over more than a decade of performance work.
